Tuesday, 19 February 2008

76. Sir Thursday

I just returned from my little trip to Halifax last night and am now feeling something close enough to lucid to write a blog entry for Garth Nix's Sir Thursday, the fourth installment in the Keys to the Kingdom series.

I'd been saving this one because while Lady Friday has been published, until a few days ago I didn't know when it would be available in soft cover (May) and wanted to space them out. In any case, it'll be at least a year before I read Superior Saturday because it's not out yet at all and I won't pay $20 for a hardcover I can read in 2 hours.

Sir Thursday was a very satisfying read, and not just because Nix is perfecting his use of the cliffhanger. The writing, as always, is great and things are intense and mysterious enough to keep me consistently engaged. I do wish these books had existed when I was a kid because I'm sure they would have then been MY FAVOURITE BOOKS OF ALL TIME; however, I'm sufficiently able now to suspend disbelief to take great pleasure from them.

I'm sure I wouldn't have understood the books' re-imagining of the strange Christian conflict (and interdependence) between the word made flesh (mysticism) and excessive bureaucracy in the form of paperwork (institutionalized "truth"), but there would have been more than enough adventuring to make up for that, I'm sure.

I also, perhaps stupidly, just started to wonder if Dame Primus isn't, in fact, the real enemy here. It occurred to me when she was so willing to allow Arthur to be conscripted into Sir Thursday's army that she might have her reasons for allowing him to be killed in battle. Is she using Arthur to gain control of the Upper and Lower House while making him think he's in control as the Rightful Heir? I get the feeling this won't be entirely clear until the 7th book and I'm hoping Nix is a really fast writer. (Apologies to those who have no idea what I'm talking about.)